The scope of sociology: What is it that sociologists seek to understand? What is sociology and what is the scope of sociology? A dictionary defines sociology as the systematic study of society and social interaction.
(www.opentextbc.ca-28-10-18). It is the scientific study of society. While sociology is not an exact science lie biology or chemistry, it does have empirical studies that are measured as scientifically as possible.
(www.enotes.com;31-10-18) study all characteristics and levels of society, sociologists break the study of society down into four separate levels of analysis: micro, meso, macro, and global. The basic distinction, however, is between micro-sociology and macro-sociology. (www.opentextbc.ca-28-10-18).
Other things that sociologist look at include, how we govern ourselves, and how rules shape the groups and societies we belong to. It was argued that the definition of the scope of sociology as an all-embracing science of society did not permit subtle analysis in most cases.What is the sociological perspective? Sociologists analyse social phenomena at different levels and from different perspectives.(www.cliffnotes.com-28-10-18) Sociologists study everything from specific events (the micro level of analysis of small social patterns) to the “big picture” (the macro level of analysis of large social patterns) (www.
cliffnotes.com-28-10-18). There are three main sociological perspectives which help sociologists explain how society influences people; the conflict perspective, functionalist perspective and the interactionist perspective. The symbolic interactionist perspective, also known as symbolic interactionism, directs sociologists to consider the symbols and details of everyday life, what these symbols mean, and how people interact with each other. According to the functionalist perspective, also called functionalism, each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society’s functioning as a whole.
The conflict perspective, which originated primarily out of Karl Marx’s writings focuses more on the negative in society. (www.cliffnotes.com-29-10-18) What skills do sociologists use to learn about the world? Some of the skills needed by Sociologists include, Analytical skills, which to be more specific is problem solving ability and sharp critical thinking, this would help sociologist look at society and situations more intensely and for them to be able to work out what is happening and to ask why. Another skill would be Collecting existing data: sociologist need to be able to look at thinks such as Official statistics Video, Photography Electronic Communications, they need to be able to look at things like thins and now what they are looking at and how to interpret them right.How does sociology impact the world? Since sociology is the study of society that means it is the study of its behaviours, culture, norms and anything else that influences or affects people and their attitudes, it helps us understand about who we are and why we do the things we do, like the certain groups we belong to and the impact this would have on us. Sociology plays a big role in helping make or fix solutions to any social problems in society.
Sociology can help use improve our way of learning by comparison (WWW.Enotes.com 28-10-18) social imagination helps us to understand our social lives as it shows us how much of an impact people make in our lives. Conclusion: In finishing up this assignment we have learned a great deal about sociology and about what it does for society.
We researched more things outside of class about the scope and perspectives of sociology and how it would impact society as a whole. While completing the assignment we thought more about sociology as a degree and hopefully a career in the future. We learned that it is difficult working in pairs with someone that you don’t see every day and don’t know that well as we found it hard to talk about the questions we are doing and how we were going to put it together.
